Graphene comprises a flat monolayer of carbon atoms tightly packed into a two dimensional honeycomb lattice. Graphene is one of the basic building blocks for graphite materials of other dimensionalities.
Graphene is being studied as a replacement for silicon materials in semiconductor devices as well as other material science and condensed matter physics applications. Because of the two dimensional structure, graphene exhibits very high crystal and electronic qualities that have a great number of potential applications, particularly where layers of one to a few atom thickness are desired.
In the area of semiconductor materials, graphene has shown high charge mobility performance, although such has been accomplished only with small fragments of graphene layers. In order to be of practical usefulness, full graphene wafers that contain one to a few layers of graphene on traditional silicon substrates will be necessary. Current methods of obtaining graphene layers are by exfoliation from sections of graphite crystals or by thermal decomposition of the surface layer of a SiC wafer. In-situ chemical vapor deposition of graphene has been achieved, but only in small fragments on metal surfaces.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for improvements to the formation of graphene layers for use in semiconductor applications.